Question

DOCTL "Access Token is Required" even after initializing

Just installed DOCTL on my Raspberry Pi. I have performed doctl auth ini and verified my API Token.

Yet, when I run my script, I get the following:

Error: unable to initialize DigitalOcean api client: access token is required. (hint: run 'doctl auth init')

I created a new API Key just to be safe and I get the same issue.

However, if I run something as simple as doctl compute snapshot list or /snap/bin/doctl compute snapshot list I get the expected list of my snapshots with no error message.

I’m using this same script on a few different Ubuntu 18.06 LTS and a previous Pi installation. Can’t seem to figure out where I’m going wrong.


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Bobby Iliev
Site Moderator
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April 6, 2020
Accepted Answer

Hi there @aaronmweiss,

It sounds like that your script might be running as a different user, for example you’ve authenticated as your default pi user but the script is executed as the root user.

I would recommend adding doctl auth init in the beginning of your script and running it like that 1 time so that you are sure that the user the script runs as has actually authenticated.

Let me know how it goes. Regards, Bobby

I’m new to doctl and I’m facing a similar error apparently:

 % doctl version
doctl version 1.111.0-release

 % doctl auth init
Using token for context default

Validating token... ✔

 % doctl apps create -c app.yaml
Error: Unable to initialize DigitalOcean API client: access token is required. (hint: run 'doctl auth init')

Adding doctl auth init to the script the first go around worked perfectly.

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